Twinsville and Hidden Valley

A few months ago I was interviewed by Lionel Strang and Bruce Wilson of "A Modeler's Life." It is a fun little podcast that tries to get the behind the scenes stories of model railroaders and what they do when they aren't playing with trains. This week they published the interview on their website and iTunes. You can find it at this link.

My daughter was listening to it with me in the car when I mentioned "Twinsville." Twinsville was a train layout that my dad built for my twin brother and I when we were little boys living in Brooklyn, NY. That was about 55 years ago.  I remember the layout well, but many of the details faded from my memory. I knew there was a photo somewhere of it, but I did not have it.

When my daughter got home, she found the photo that I remembered in a collection that her mom had. So she sent me this quick cell phone snap. She will be sending the image to me so that I can clean it up in Photoshop as the image looks like it has had some damage in the half century since it was taken.

The two engineers are my brother and I. Note the spiffy bow ties and hats. The girl in the middle was a neighbor who I can't remember.

The steam engine was mine, while my brother had the diesel. I thought it was an ATSF war bonnet, but this looks like a New Haven unit. Anybody know for sure?

Note the station with the name of the town of Twinsville painted on the roof. I remember my dad hand painting the letters. My dad was really a great artist. He excelled at drawing cartoons.  Later in his life he took up acrylic painting and even sold some artwork.

In keeping with the family tradition, I built a train layout for Chase and Danica. They called it Hidden Valley. That layout would slide under Chase's bed. It was a dusty environment for a layout, but they took excellent care of it. I also built a dollhouse for Danica. I still have that in my house in the guest bedroom.

Yes, I am looking forward to grandchildren to continue the tradition.

Interview on Model Railcast Podcast 216

Switch district in North Las Vegas

We just got back from a great family vacation in southwest Utah. While we did a bunch of activities like hiking in lava tubes, climbing on petrified sand dunes, zig zagging up cliffs at Zion National park, and lots of golf, we hardly saw any trains. Except for about 30 minutes of railfanning North Las Vegas on the day we arrived, and two intermodals we saw on the way back to the airport, we didn't see a train for the whole week.

Just before we left, Tim Harrison interviewed me for the ModelRailcast podcast. We talked about my various projects, layouts and books. The audio track is available on itunes and at this link for non-itune users.

Aquia Line in the Media

Paul visiting the layout for a work session a few years ago

This month Model Railroader ran an article about battery powered locomotives in model railroading. Veteran author and model railroader Paul Dolkos wrote the article. Paul is not a battery power user so he brings an unbiased perspective to the issue. In fact, one could even say he was skeptical about the need and utility of battery power. He interviewed several model railroad battery users and presented a nice overview of the subject.

In reading his text, one could get the impression that my battery conversions have not been that successful. That is not the way I feel about it. He quotes me as saying words to the effect that, "sometimes the locos don't charge due to dirty pickup or other issue." While I may have said that, I have since learned how to avoid that issue. As proof, I can say that my battery locos have not run out of charge since they returned from the NMRA show at Atlanta. That is over two years ago. Admittedly, I have not had any extended op sessions in that period, but the batteries have performed well.

As I mentioned last month, I am looking at the keep alive circuits as an alternative to battery power. The main reason is ease of installation and packaging. Trying to cram the required components of the Stanton system including a BPS, battery, DCC decoder and speaker into a O scale 4-4-0 is not an easy task. I am hoping the keep alive equipped decoders will fit more easily. Since I already have DCC on my layout, it is not much more expensive to add the DCC decoders with keep alive circuits to a loco.

On March 13, Tim Harrison of the Model Railcast Show interviewed me for two hours about my model railroad escapades. It was a fun interview, though next time I need to check some of the things I say, as I made several factual mistakes mostly due to faulty memory or just talking so fast I got tongue twisted.  Here is a link to the podcast.  The podcast is also available on itunes. I suggest you get a beverage of choice and take a swig every time I make a mistake. Just don't drive afterwards if you select an alcoholic beverage.

Here is some errata I picked up:
Malcom McLean - started container revolution
Maersk Triple E is 400m, not 440m
Britain and Russia invaded Iran in WWII, not Britain and France (I misstated this a couple times. I was getting Russia, Germany and France mixed up.)
Russo-Japanese War was 1904-1905. Japanese casualties were high but not 600,000. Estimates are about 50,000 -70,000 Russian and 80,000 -86,000 Japanese losses.